zulu asked: "What got you into fandom? Does the same thing spark your passion now, or is it something(s) else that keep you inspired?"

The thing is, I've replied to several other questions first because I don't know the answer to this one. I don't know if the same thing sparks my passion now as in my early days of joining the Harry Potter and House fandoms because I haven't felt passionate or inspired about fannish stuff in a while. Meh on TV shows, meh on reading fic, meh on my own writing and vidding; hence taking in so many books and movies lately on my own. Lying fallow, knowing something else will come along eventually. And that's okay, even though it can be sad not participating in what others of you are happy about.

But something might be waking up.

Yuletide used to make me a Scrooge McGrumpypants, which I think was mostly about my own pang of sadness that I didn't -- don't -- feel anywhere near as excited about it as other people because I hardly know any of the sources being written about and I don't find the stories for unfamiliar sources accessible in the way, say, the vids are at Festivids. I skim and try probably somewhere between 1 and 5% of the stuff posted. This year, I liked:

A Different Kind of Boy (Pitch Black), in which Jack comes on to Riddick and Riddick doesn't say no; contains some unfortunate "the killer kissed him hard" sort of stuff, but the trans* depiction was interesting

I could have sworn I'd trolled the AO3 archives for Riddick/Jack fic after seeing Chronicles of Riddick a month or two ago, but either I did it wrong or the Riddick/Jack tag hasn't been wrangled to match Riddick/[other name Jack goes by that is sort of a spoiler]. In any case, I found some others and fell into reading them for hours in a way I haven't done in possibly years:

No Rest by Laylah, 1K, which I'd give the same summary as above and just hits a cluster of my kinks

Twin Flames by serafina20, 23K, in which Jack tries to grow up; it's permanently unfinished, and I wish it had warned for past incest/abuse, but it was an engrossing read

The Things We Leave Behind by Ratatosk, 100K+, which I've by now mixed up entirely with Twin Flames perhaps because they both remix the second movie, but involves Jack being taken by and escaping from mercenaries trying to bait Riddick and then they meet again trying to save the universe from Necromongers and there's excellent dubious consent stuff; also unfinished but being updated slowly at ff.net

Then I rented The Iron Giant and The Fast & the Furious. So I guess I'm having a low-burn Vin Diesel thing. Ten years after everyone else. Funny because he's not my usual type. Feels good! I am contemplating doing a quick Kink Bingo vid about how Riddick gets chained down and cuffed and gagged all the time. Dilemma: do it now while the interest is still fresh, or wait two weeks-ish until the last movie in the trilogy comes out on DVD (I didn't catch it in theaters)? Advice welcome.

Second, or I suppose first chronologically, the other week I tried NBC's Dracula with Jonathan Rhys-Meyers and Thomas Kretschmann. I don't know what the hell that show/miniseries is doing (steampunk + villain/hero switch + slow-mo fight scenes + plotline about energy conglomerates + lady medical student + terrible accents + queer subtext that turns into text = ??), but I couldn't stop watching. More on that in its own post.

Third, after reading the Riddick/Jack stuff I went and added 1,000 words to an unrelated story on my computer, which is about 1,000 words more than I'd written since January.

...That didn't answer the question at all -- sorry, zulu -- but it's the best response I've got right now.

Jeez, it sounds horrific to write it up like that. At the time, it was just a thing that was happening. One girl hid in a room that was my childhood bedroom by lifting herself onto the top shelf of the closet by the lintel like a pull-up, realized that she could be easily seen, and hastily shoved a folded blanket between her body and the top of the door. I was the girl. Vin Diesel found her/me and said, reasonably enough for a prison guard, something about how the punishment would be eight somethings but he'd go halvsies with her and only do four if she'd just give in. She/I said, calmly, Okay. He seemed taken aback. That was that.

*shrug*

Today marked the end of my three-month probation period at work. I had a good review and was not fired. (I was not worried since my performance has been fine and people like me, but still. Not being on probation is a relief in the current financial climate. If anyone in the office had had to be cut to save money, it would have been me.) (Not to say that fear isn't still there; it's just harder to let someone go after they're off probation.)

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Good, easy soup recipe, adapted from my new everything-chicken cookbook: Dice and sauté two small onions. When soft and beginning to brown, add a quart of chicken or vegetable broth. Grate a couple of zucchini or summer squash; add to the pot and boil for ~15 minutes. You can also add small pasta at the time you add the vegetables. At the end, drizzle in two eggs or egg whites and lemon juice to taste. Mm. Looks like it makes three bowls' worth.

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Let's answer some vidding questions from alizarin_nyc: "What do you use for media when starting a vid? Do you rip DVDs, convert .avi files or what? What editing software do you use and why? What is the next thing you want to learn/try in writing or vidding?"

4) That's a good question about what I might want to learn next in writing. Will have to get back to you on that. As compared to video editing, fiction writing is a thing that comes so unconsciously to me -- not always easily, just instinctively rather than as a series of technical steps -- that it's hard for me to approach and understand it as a craft. (I used to think that was something to brag about, but the more I press up against the boundaries of what doesn't come naturally to me and what I haven't been educated about, and the more I look back on many of the fics I've written and listen to others who do understand the technical elements of putting together effective stories and characters, like the more I appreciate that relying on instinct alone can also be a limitation.)

1. The busiest week of the month is over, and I can turn my attention to things like cooking and cleaning and my festivid. This of course means that I have lost inspiration for it. :( I need to either buckle down and see if this song will work after all, or find a new one. Somewhere.

2. In browsing arts markets and whatnot for Christmas-celebrating friends and family, I found this anatomy bracelet and bought it for myself. I don't tend to buy things for myself that aren't food, clothes or books, so it took some convincing, but I really like it. (I did get two used cookbooks for a few dollars that are as much technique as recipes: one on salad greens and dressings, and one on chicken.) I also now have, after being financially careful since moving up here, a TV! It is a real, grownup TV. I have never had a grownup TV; only a little portable one in college and the old CRT in my last apartment. No cable package, but no need just yet since it connects to the DVD player and Netflix. With HDMI. ~magic hands~

kassrachelasked: Reminisce about your first fandom: what did you love about it?

This is much harder to answer than anticipated, because my entry into fandom occurred stepwise across 15 or 20 years.

There was the first canon I obsessed over and daydreamed about and encountered ancillary storytelling for in the form of tie-in novels (Star Trek), the first for which I found fic online and engaged with my best friend in what I now recognize as RPing (Anne Rice's Vampire Chronicles) [and I started writing stories for Trek and the VC around the same time, as a teen], the first for which I inhaled fic and couldn't figure out how to stop (Buffy the Vampire Slayer), the first I wrote meta/acafan stuff about and went to cons for (Harry Potter), and the first fandom I fully participated in on LJ, including writing fic and commenting on other fans' posts (House).

When I asked kassrachel if she could help narrow down the definition of "fandom" in this case, she said: "First canon you fell in love with and wanted to tell stories about? First canon you actively wrote stories about? First canon about which you wrote stories which you shared with other fans?" Fortunately, for all of those, I think I can answer Star Trek.

daasgrrlasked: What combination of things would make for the Best TV Show Ever?

It will be a drama.

Above all, it will need to pass the litmus test of a character being able to say, "When I died..." The possibility of surviving death is what draws me to most of the books and shows I've loved. It works for vampires, devils and sci fi technology, among other things. Maybe medical dramas, too, if the docs are really good. :) So that helps establish the genre.

Excellent writing is important. It'll have smart, witty dialogue, but not the smug-quippy one-liner stuff that tries to pass for witty on shows like CSI. And it'll be well written on a larger scale, too -- episodes make sense, arcs build, and the production team pays attention to continuity.

There will be many women characters, and they will be written like people and not like stereotypes.

MINIMAL SMIRKING.

It will star some impossible combination of favorite actors/actresses. Not picky about who gets picked from the long list!

Characters will not spend the whole show bickering or undermining one another. Chosen family is lovely, although not a requirement (I think), but I don't like what developed on shows like House where there were no support networks for anyone and bad stuff kept happening.

It will air on HBO or Showtime or Netflix, because that means (1) episodes can be up to 60 minutes long and not have the roller coaster of mini dramatic arcs demanded by commercial breaks, (2) the production values will be incredible, and (3) sex! Including nontraditional sex.

Which brings me to the last item on the wish list: There will be many characters among whom relationships are possible. Sort of like how on Buffy the Vampire Slayer or The Vampire Diaries or True Blood or even SGA, you could point to evidence supporting an argument for a relationship between/among any two or three or four characters in a given season, including villains, only this time it would be on screen. So you never know when sexual tension will turn into something more. M/F, M/M, F/F, M/M/F, F/F/M, OT4, whatever. NO MORE of this "heroine must choose between two men" stuff that lasts year after year - on cable TV, she shouldn't have to choose! Cut through the drama leftover from decades of conservative network control! Let's focus on a different plot. Oh, and an asexual character would be nice, too. Sigh.

Well, and I guess the last thing is that fandom friends would get into the show and have fun either writing commentary about it or playing in it.

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What are your litmus tests, by the way? I seem to recall ellen_fremedon's has something to do with robots, for example.

And argh, that is hard. I love so many actors. I have had crushes on many more actors than real people. It took a lot of restraint not to list them all here. :)

But I guess the one who has been most consistent since I've been a grownup, and isn't really tangled up in hormones, is Sarah Polley. She is an excellent actress, thoughtful in her performances and choices of projects, a talented director, a lovely singer, and pretty without being perfectly-Hollywood-pretty (ex. charmingly crooked teeth!). I like that she's more or less my age. I respect that she's an atheist and a political activist, too. I will watch her in pretty much anything, and it's bound to be worthwhile.

I fell in love with Sarah Polley when I was maybe 16 years old and saw her in Guinevere with Stephen Rea, for reasons that maybe had more to do with myself than anything else, but whatever. I went through some of her back catalog, sometimes just to see her and sometimes by coincidence. She (and everyone else) was spectacular in The Sweet Hereafter, and she was good in Exotica, too, although she had a lesser role in that one. I remember having fun watching her in Go.

A college friend and I went to see her once when she came to the Brattle Theater in Cambridge, possibly to promote her directorial debut, Away From Her, and that was a treat. Since then, I have enjoyed her even in so-so movies like The I Inside (which I watched for *cough* Robert Sean Leonard and only recall his Pert Plus hair and an argument on a staircase) and Dawn of the Dead, and in downright bizarre ones, like No Such Thing. She hit it out of the park in The Secret Life of Words, even if I couldn't gauge the accuracy of her accent.

Probably most fandom people who are familiar with her know her from Slings & Arrows? I'm really looking forward to watching that one day. Ditto for the two recent movies she directed and got many accolades for: Take This Waltz (in the Netflix queue) and Stories We Tell, which I was disappointed to miss when it played at the AFI this spring.

I choose... comedian, standup variety. And the answer would have to be Eddie Izzard. In part because I know him best within the type of comedy I like most, and also because I quote him all the time. ("I'm covered in bees!""Do you have a flag?""D'you like - bread?""No one was alive then." "Toblerone, Darth Vader?"* etc. etc.) My sophomore and junior year roommate introduced me to him in "Dressed to Kill" at her brother's apartment one day, possibly the day we drove back to school after Thanksgiving break and had gotten up so early to avoid traffic that there was little else we felt capable of doing by the afternoon than watching TV. Anyway, I was charmed.

He was fun in Shadow of the Vampire, too, and there's another movie or two he was in that are buried somewhere in the Netflix queue, I'm sure. He was a hoot as one of the Four Yorkshiremen along with Alan Rickman in that comedy-for-charity thing they filmed at Wembley Stadium in the '90s. Oh, hey, and deelaundry and I just rewatched "Glorious" the other weekend.

What I like best in standup comedians is the ability to be funny without being some kind of -ist (and generally without being obnoxious). It isn't any better if the person belongs to the group(s) they're stereotyping. This knocks out a majority of people on Comedy Central and stuff. Within the last year or so I remembered that I like things that are funny (heh) and started watching more standup comedy on TV and Netflix and wherever to broaden my knowledge of who's out there, with a special attempt to watch women comedians. New and confirmed favorites have included Ellen DeGeneres, Wanda Sykes, Margaret Cho and Craig Ferguson. Well, no, I do enjoy some of Lewis Black's solo stuff, so he is the exception to the obnoxious category. As kids we loved George Carlin and Bill Cosby and possibly Gallagher, although most of the Gallagher memories are the sledgehammering. Louis CK is borderline but I admit I only gave him a few minutes' attempt. My sister tried to get me into Dane Cook but it didn't take. I don't tend to like comics who make me hate myself for laughing.

I was going to say this question had great timing because today's disc in the mail was "Whoopi Goldberg," only it turned out to be a Biography episode and not a routine, so. The ground she broke as described in "Why We Laugh" made me appreciate her work all the more, though. Hm. Maybe tonight's the night to finally watch Aisha Tyler Live at the Fillmore.

That thing where you don't post for a while and then you don't post because it's like a logjam? That is happening.

Re: the meme going around where friends request topics and you write about it on a given day in December: Let's try that! I can't commit to a post a day before winter break, but maybe three times a week? Will we even get that many requests?

Thanksgivukkah happened. Loved hanging out with my sister, as always; joined her and her friends for the first time on Leftover Thanksgiving Friday for their traditional playing of Cards Against Humanity; got a ride back yesterday from her and her current touring musician. Got to know dad's fiancee's extended family a little more. Wore a silly turkey hat. Ate a lot. Read a book (How We Die by Sherwin Nuland). Only had to go to the supermarket twice. Watched more TV than is advisable (er... Star Trek III, Star Trek IV, TNG, South Park, Moominland cartoons, some Peanuts movie that took place in the French countryside, Top Gear, What Maisie Knew [again], That Guy Who Was In That Thing, TOS "Amok Time," probably other stuff I'm forgetting. Ah, right, Independence Day, and an episode of a travel show, in which Joel McHale went to Northern Ireland and had style). Avoided manual labor and basement clean-up except for helping move an armchair and a bookcase and the contents of the bookcase up a flight of stairs. Avoided heavy conversations until the last morning. Exchanged gifts. Did not make a turkey menorah, alas.

Now back to the land of functional computers. Even though Hanukkah is half over, 'tis the season of consumerism/sales and parties and lights against the early nightfall, and coming up soon for the first time in years, the aforementioned winter break. Happy December.

Ah! I see people are starting to add last lines to that meme where you list the first lines of your most recent 21 fics. (Why 21, btw, does anyone know?) That is most excellent, as that's what I was planning to do anyway because I struggle more with conclusions than with openings—or, well, maybe that's not true, because committing text to a blank Word document can be terrifying, but at least I tend to spend more time crafting last lines. Or being prouder of them when they're right. Knowing when to get out of a story, and how, is hard. And it goes hand in hand with figuring out what the story's title is, since both involve articulating the point or the theme of the whole piece.

Which is why I found thingswithwings' ruminations on her first lines so interesting; for her, the opening lines are the thesis lines. The story you're about to get in a sentence. That is impressive. For me, they've been more or less intended to get people to keep reading until the good stuff comes. I perused my opening lines after reading twings' post and couldn't come up with a unifying theme. Some are statements of action, some are lines of dialogue, many include "when" or "as" or other clunkyish ways of combining an action with a mention of what else is going on, some are short, some are long. You can tell my first lines are not consistently good when they're only occasionally the lines I pick for the story's LJ cut text or AO3 summary section. But a few I really do like on their own.

Here are the most recent 21—which, by the way, comprises about a third of all the fics I've ever posted, ha. Favorites are *asterisked.

See, and then last lines. I think there are some fic writers who do killer last lines. Like helenish. Read Blush (SGA) or Pants on Fire (Inception) and admire. Everything gets pulled together in that last paragraph and makes the whole story you've just read come alight in a new way. And half a dozen other people I can't remember right now, who probably include thingswithwings and Pru.

But the craft of killer last lines and a citation list of examples is a big topic for a night that is not tonight. For now, here are my most recent attempts. Again a bit of a mishmash—some click in the way I always hope I'll be able to figure out but only sometimes manage to; more are blah "they walked off into the sunset/fell asleep/lived happily ever after/etc." types or just generally feel like Concluding Sentences instead of more satisfying kickers or twists. There does seem to be a pattern in that the majority are short.

I wonder how well this part of the meme works if you don't have the context of the story that led up to each last line. Hm.

Gasp, I have done a meme. The rules: You request an age from a friend and fill out the meme questions as they applied to you then and now. kass gave me 18, cinco gave me 22, and I can't pass up an opportunity to talk about myself.

If you want to play, say so in the comments and leave a number (that may or may not be how old you currently are) below which I'll pick an age.

But while we're on the subject of annual holidayish fanwork exchange fests, UGH FESTIVID WHY ARE YOU BEING SO DIFFICULT. :/ If it were a dress I was presenting on Project Runway, Nina Garcia would tut at how parts of it look tortured.

Eh. I'm sure it'll break loose eventually. Until then, there is a surprise extra day off Monday and a trip to synn's to be had. Might need some luck for the drive back next week, weather-wise. Hope those of you who're traveling haven't been too messed up by the midwest storm.

In conclusion:

Apologies if this isn't open-access beyond certain U.S. institutions -- it really ought to be, especially the Christmas issue -- but the Case report of E.T.—The Extra-Terrestrial is my favorite article (so far) of the British Medical Journal's annual holiday spoof issue. Even if the one explaining Rudolph's red nose as having to do with excess nasal vascularization is getting more press around here.

I like doing a Works in Progress meme once a year-ish. This one (seen most recently at perspi's, sabine's, anatsuno's, etc.) looks like fun: Post the names of all the files in your WIP folder(s), regardless of how non-descriptive or ridiculous. This doesn't count the cobwebby ones in the "abandoned" folder. & I'm adding an excerpt from each, just because.

I find myself mysteriously with nothing to say. That will surely change soon, but as long as I'm putting off writing my first research paper of the semester, here's a snapshot for that "photograph yourself right now" meme that's going around. Uh, warning for a close-up picture of an eye?

Back when I did the photo meme, roga asked for a photo of my favorite place in the city. It took me a while to figure out what that would be: the view of the skyline from the BQE (Brooklyn-Queens Expressway). Unfortunately, since I'm always driving, and alone, it's not too smart to snap a photo. Well, on Saturday I finally had the chance as my mother and sister and I took the scenic route on the way back from Pennsylvania—and as a bonus, my sister's camera takes video, so here are ( two shaky clips: )

Then the camera battery died, so that's all you get.

For a laugh, here's a sign at the corner gas station we stopped at that morning: